‘Ms. Marvel,’ ‘She-Hulk,’ and ‘Moon Knight’ Are the Way Forward for Marvel and Disney+

As we learn more and more about Disney+’s slate of Marvel shows, more becomes clear. The Falcon and The Winter Soldier is going to lean hard into the Captain America comic book mythos with a supporting cast that includes comic Cap’s girlfriend (Emily VanCamp as Sharon Carter), comic Cap’s archenemy (Daniel Bruhl as Zemo), and comic Cap’s main rival (Wyatt Russell as U.S. Agent). We also know that, uh, well, we don’t know a lot about WandaVision but we know it’s going to be weird. But we’ve all been so focused on the here and now, the “what’s this show about” and “who’s gonna be in it” of it all, that we haven’t thought about the way forward.

Disney+’s big D23 showcase answered that major, major question–a question we didn’t even think to ask. We now know the future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and it looks like a giant green fashionista lawyer, a deranged vigilante clad in brightest white, and a shape-altering Muslim teen from New Jersey.

Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige dropped the news during the Disney+ showcase, revealing the next wave of Marvel Studios shows: She-Hulk, Moon Knight, and Ms. Marvel. All three heroes are either cult favorites, fan favorites, or just regular favorites amongst the Marvel devoted. While none of them have ever had their own TV show or appeared in live-action before, they’re all big deal characters for Marvel Comics fans. They also have lots of mythology to pull from; She-Hulk and Moon Knight have been around for over 30 years, and Ms. Marvel skyrocketed to being a Marvel mainstay in just the six years since her debut.

But the thing is, as much as I love these characters (my affection for She-Hulk is as mighty as her jade bicep), I never once thought we’d ever see them in a Marvel Studios movie. Sure, the odds increased after the Shang-Chi and Eternals movies were announced, as their comic profiles are way lower than our new TV trio, but it felt like a longshot. But now with Marvel Studios making TV, Jen Walters, Marc Spector, and Kamala Khan now have a place to shine–and lead Marvel, Disney, and Disney+ into the next decade of superhero action. This is the way forward.

Why? Because–and again, we’ve been too stunned just by the fact that we’re even getting Loki and Hawkeye shows starring the movie actors to think about anything past Season 1–there may not be a way forward for any of the Marvel Studios shows that have already been announced. That’s because they star movie stars, and the movie stars are the main reason we’re hyped. Paul Bettany, Jeremy Renner, Tom Hiddleston–these aren’t people that normally do television.

All of these actors, including Elizabeth Olsen, Anthony Mackie, and Sebastian Stan, are in-demand movie stars and are making time in their schedules for these small screen adventures because they’re either contractually obligated to or they know that Disney+ is bringing the quality or they feel they owe it to Marvel after the super-movies made them in-demand actors or a combination of all three. If it was hard finding time in all those schedules to make these shows happen, do you think it’ll be easy to make Season 2 happen? That might be why Hawkeye has a successor–the still uncast Kate Bishop–built into the premise.

But Ms. Marvel, She-Hulk, and Moon Knight? Those are the way forward because Marvel Studios is building them from the ground up as TV shows. They won’t have to count on favors or cultural cache in order to sway whoever stars in those shows to stick around for more than one season. It’ll be built right into the contracts that the live-action Kamala, Jen, and Marc sign. And those shows will probably all debut after we’ve seen at least a few if not all of the star-studded movie-based shows, which means they will have a lot of hype built up around them even though they star characters we’ve yet to see on screen.

It’s even possible that all three of them will debut in episodes of the movie spinoff shows. Time-traveling Loki meets an ancient Egyptian god with the powers of the moon (or whatever)? Teen Kate Bishop has a friend from Jersey she’s always texting with? Falcon and Winter Soldier sue U.S. Agent for infringing on Captain America’s copyright and hire a lawyer, who just happens to be Bruce Banner’s cousin? All of that could feasibly happen. And actually, oh wow, I want that last scenario to happen.

That’s the way forward, once these potentially one-season marvels wrap up. It’s incredibly likely that Disney+ and Marvel Studios know they aren’t getting six seasons and a movie out of WandaVision in a timely manner thanks to Bettany and Olsen’s schedules, but they can make that happen with Ms. Marvel and her new slate-mates. And that seems to be the intention! After all, Feige pointedly said during the panel that Ms. Marvel will appear in movies and TV shows. That’s already more than the Netflix heroes ever managed.

This is the next decade of Marvel Studios laid out before us, with characters intended to hop back and forth from movies to TV–and She-Hulk, Ms. Marvel, and Moon Knight are probably only the beginning.